


The Rime of the Ancient Traveler

by MrProphet



Category: Doctor Who, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-21
Updated: 2017-04-21
Packaged: 2018-10-22 08:44:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10693506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MrProphet/pseuds/MrProphet





	The Rime of the Ancient Traveler

It is an ancient Traveller,  
And he stoppeth one of three.  
‘Oi mate, with your coat and goofy grin,  
Where’d you get off stopping me?’  
  
‘My best mate Kat is getting hitched,  
We’re on a hen nigh, ken?  
The girls are here, the bar is free:  
The stripper’s booked for ten.’   
  
He holds her with his haunted gaze,  
‘There was this rift,’ said he.  
The boist’rous lass was took aback  
‘I ought to go,’ said she.  
  
‘There was this rift,’ the Traveller said,  
‘A tear in time and space,  
Out in Medusa’s great Cascade,  
An oddly crowded place.’  
  
The bride had gone into the pub,  
Quite tight e’en so early.  
‘They’ll pour the shots,’ the lass bemoaned,  
‘But not a glass for me.’  
  
Yet though she looked with thirsty gaze,  
On her mates at their hen night swill,  
She could not help but hear him out,  
His eyes they held her still.  
  
‘It was a Dalek battleship,  
It’s power plant was hit,  
In the vortex the core did burst,  
Of all events this was the worst,  
And time itself did split.’  
  
‘The cloister bell rang all about,  
My TARDIS was two days set out,  
From Metabellis-3,  
My folk once more had turned their backs,  
This one was down to me.  
  
‘I flew the TARDIS through the rift,  
To seek the trouble’s source  
But found my ship was tossed and thrown  
Upon a dreadful force.  
  
‘The old girl’s systems were upset,  
Her data banks in a spin.  
I could not fathom up from down,  
Some trouble I was in.  
  
‘My time rotor was out of synch,  
My helm unregulated,  
My ship’s dimensions unstable were,  
My every move frustrated.  
  
‘And just as doom seemed certainty,  
My coming death so sure,  
My ship was spun back into life,  
By a passing vortisaur.  
  
‘In passing by that scavenger,  
Had knocked me back on track,  
And back to the rift on currents strong,  
The vortisaur I followed along,  
And to the rift flew back.  
  
‘All that time that dinosaur bird,  
Did dance about my craft,  
It was my guide in reaches lonely,  
I took to it and named it Tony,  
My friends they would have laughed.  
  
‘Now with my TARDIS engines I  
Did seal that open sore.’  
‘But why do you quake?’  
‘With my temporal wake,  
I crushed the vortisaur.’  
  
And now the ancient Traveller,  
Doth shake his weary head,  
For he has spoke his secret sore,  
That by his hand the vortisaur,  
Named Tony is now dead.  
  
‘And yet I have no time allowed,  
To brood upon the past,  
Because poor Tony’s dying cries,  
Have torn across far distant skies,  
And rifts are spreading fast.  
  
‘Which brings me to my present straight,  
To find before it is too late,  
A rift which splits Midlothian’s Heart,  
And seal it while I may,  
Else it will tear this world apart,  
Which would be bad, I’d say.’  
  
‘You want the Heart of Midlothian?  
When did you not just say?  
Instead of rattling on and on,  
It’s just down that-a-way.’  
  
And off the ancient Traveller runs,  
To end this cosmic threat,  
And with him too the reveller comes,  
For necking vodka with her chums,  
Now seems to lack in depth.  
  
And so the ancient Traveller,  
Goes on and dreadful fast,  
And never turns his weary head,  
To think of what is past.


End file.
